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More fun than being called into active duty.

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is the new military simulation from Codemasters. I use the term simulation because the game seems to mimic how catastrophic it is to get hit by a bullet in real life. To play Dragon Rising you can not just run and gun like normal first person shooters, you must plan your attack. You have to take everything into consideration, such as terrain, weapon usage, enemy type, etc., before going into battle. However, even with all the planning in the world I would still not feel confident going into any battle. Even though the game is tough, has crazy AI, is on the buggy side and has a steep learning curve, those willing to put up with all of this will find a game that has decent visuals, superb sound effects, easy to use multiplayer and enjoyable gameplay. In short, they will find a satisfying experience.

Before I start in again on the difficulty, let me begin by saying that the game is a large amount of fun. After playing a board a few times I was able to adjust to the difficulty and I really enjoyed playing. That being said, this game can be frustrating at times. Not throw the controller down as you shout expletives frustrating, but frustrating enough to make me quit playing. When I first started playing, after the first level or two, I became so frustrated that I quit and I went on to review some other games. I will be honest with you, if I didn't have to write this review, I wouldn't have picked the game back up. However, I am very glad I did. The game seems to have cycles where some of the objectives are hard, due to the time of day or the defensive position the enemy is taking or any number of other reasons. After these hard objectives the game seems to ease off and give you the upper hand for a while to let you, relatively, breeze on through.

The reason the game is difficult is attributed to the realistic nature of the game. If you come upon an enemy around a corner you have a split second to take action or you are shot dead (the enemy's aim is amazingly accurate, even from a distance). While this can be a bit annoying, it also forces you plan a bit more so that you don't end up dead and have to go back to the last saved check point. While the enemy is able to take you out in a realistic and extremely quick manner, the reverse is also true, and let me tell you, it is very satisfying when you have an enemy in your sights and you take him down by a well placed shot or two. The realism doesn't stop with just dying either. If you shoot an enemy's leg he will go down and crawl to a position and continue shooting or call a medic and get up and start fighting again; except then he will have a limp. Again, the reverse is true as well. If you get shot in the leg you will start to bleed and your movement will be hindered. If you don't take care of your leg with a field dressing you will bleed to death.

As I have already made very clear the game is difficult but I noticed a few quirky things, some inconsistencies if you will, that I would like to point out. First off is that if you are hit during combat and are about to die from bleeding too much, all you have to do is put on a field dressing and you will be up and running around in no time. I am talking about going from imminent death to you being up and running and fighting in a matter of seconds. Strange the realism didn't extend to healing yourself. Second is the lack of intelligence provided at the beginning of each mission. I would imagine that if the US is going to war, then we are a least going to have satellite images of the place we are invading at a minimum. The game gives you a little map and gives you the gist of what is going to happen but that is it. As if the commanders didn't know they were going to ask for the surface to air missile radar to be taken out from the beginning. Third is that the difficulty settings do not actually change anything about the game other than removing the on screen assistance, such as way points. True it would make it a great deal harder without the assistance, but it seems like something about the enemy would change too (such as the enemy's awesome aim).

While I did enjoy the game, I noticed a few distracting problems. Things like textures being painted on slowly were noticeable but not that big of a deal. I wasn't even that bothered when the sound effects for the gun I was shooting cut out. What did kind of bother me was when the gun I was shooting actually disappeared. It was like I was shooting bullets with my mind. :) The gun did eventually come back and I shouldn't even be complaining, as I was able to clearly see what I was shooting at but I couldn't see out of the gun's sight, so I had a tough time hitting anything.

The visuals in this game were close to or on par with many of the big named games out there. While the visuals wouldn't win any awards most likely, they did give me a sense of being in the middle of a war with helicopters shooting down at me and smoke effects that were very realistic. The one aspect of the game's visuals that I did not care for was the darkness level. Unfortunately the game is very dark at times. So dark that it made it hard to even see the enemy positions on my compass when viewing it with a dark back ground. I often had to look into the sky so I had a brighter back ground to be able to see where the enemy was located.

While the visuals were just so-so, the sound effects on the other hand were fantastic. The sound effects were so good that I would stop some times and just listen for the enemy so I would know where they were firing from. In between fighting, I could hear my team mates' foot steps around me, which gave me their position so I didn't need to look for them. There were many times in the game where I would freeze and drop to the ground because a helicopter was flying over head and, with a little training, I was able to tell its direction and distance from my position.

Dragon Rising features some fun co-op and versus multiplayer modes. The versus modes are the standard run of the mill player versus player and team versus team modes that are supported by most first person shooters out there. The co-op mode is not. In co-op mode you can connect with up to three other people to take on a single level or to play through the entire campaign. While all of these modes are great once they are working, I did have quite a few issues trying to get things going and keep them going. I know it is not the fault of the game but I had a lot of difficulty trying to find a server on a Saturday night at 11pm, as there were only a handful of servers going. I know the game just came out, but I expected to find dozens on a weekend night, maybe everyone else but me and a few gamers online have a life. I eventually did get connected to a team versus team game and I really got into it. Again, it was pretty standard fare for most FPS games, so I won't go into more detail. After my versus games, I attempted to find a co-op game to join in on but couldn't, so I created my own. After getting everything set up, which was really easy, three other players joined me and we started to load the level. After about four minutes I gave up and had to quit the game and go back into it, as the loading screen froze my PS3. On the second attempt I was able to get everything going again but after about ten minutes of playing one of my co-op partners left and the game just quit; stating that the minimum number of players was not reached. Why wouldn't the game just fill in the spot left by the other player with a computer controlled character?

Even with all of the troubles I ran into, I eventually kept chugging along because the game is fun. This enjoyment comes partially from the environment. The game is played on an island with an open exploration setting. While there are some missions that have to be done in a certain way, within a certain time limit or are contained in a certain area, most are not. You have to choose your path, how you will attack and what weapons to attack with. You can stealthily enter the area and destroy the target without killing anyone. Conversely, you can run up to the objective, take care of the objective and run away or you could walk through the level shooting anything that moves. Do you take the high ground for the advantage or stick to the low ground for cover? The game is full of these types of choices.

While it took me a while, I eventually warmed up to this game. The gameplay is spot on and everything seems to fit appropriately into this military sim. While the FPS crowd may not get what they are expecting, if they stay around they will find what I found, a gratifying experience.